tv
The Deceived, Channel 5 review - who's fooling who?Thursday, 06 August 2020
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again, except somebody had renamed it The House at Knockdara. This was the title of the first novel by Michael Callaghan, Cambridge literature don, aspiring writer and serial seducer of his female students. Played here by Emmett J Scanlan, in young-fogey tweeds and Ernest Hemingway beard, Callaghan had “F for Fake” running all the way through him. Read more...
|
Little Birds, Sky Atlantic review - decadence and intrigue in 1950s MoroccoWednesday, 05 August 2020
Diarist, novelist and writer of erotica Anaïs Nin lived a brilliantly-coloured life littered with affairs with literary A-listers (Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Lawrence Durrell et al). Read more... |
The Talk, Channel 4 review - coping with the legacy of racismWednesday, 05 August 2020
Shall we talk about racism? Currently we seem to be talking about it all the time, and it’s the question non-white parents in Britain sooner or later find themselves pondering as they watch their children grow up in our increasingly confrontational society. Read more... |
Prodigal Son, Sky 1 review - meet Michael Sheen, psycho killerWednesday, 29 July 2020
We knew that Michael Sheen was a skilful and versatile actor, but lately he’s been getting dangerously good. Last year he roared into the third season of The Good Fight as the outrageous drug-fuelled lawyer Roland Blum, like an explosive fusion of his fellow-Welshmen Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins. Read more... |
Our Baby: A Modern Miracle, Channel 4 review - trailblazing couple's amazing journeyWednesday, 29 July 2020
On one level this documentary could be summed up as “parents have baby”, but since the parents in question are “Britain’s most prominent transgender couple”, it was a lot more complicated than that. Read more... |
Laurel Canyon, Sky Documentaries review - musical bliss in lotus landSunday, 26 July 2020
It was Alison Ellwood who directed 2013’s History of the Eagles, and now she’s at the helm of this new two-parter on Sky Documentaries, telling the story of the Los Angeles music scene from the mid-Sixties... Read more... |
Bears About the House, BBC Two review - uphill struggle to save hunted animalsWednesday, 22 July 2020
Sun bears and moon bears are probably doomed, so why bother? Wildlife trafficking is a hugely profitable worldwide criminal enterprise, with small charities (fingers in the dyke, anyone?) doing their best to stem the flow. Read more... |
The Real Eastenders, Channel 4 review - timewarp on the ThamesWednesday, 22 July 2020
This quirky little film about the Isle of Dogs (Channel 4), a vanishing fragment of the old London docklands overshadowed by the Canary Wharf skyscrapers while its traditional homes are usurped by new and unloveable tower blocks,... Read more... |
Institute, BBC Four review – masculinity and memory in a nightmarish world of workMonday, 20 July 2020
Missing the office? Or dreading the day you have to return? What’s your relationship to the people you work with and for, and how does it intersect with your personal life? Do your paymasters know you? Do they care about you? Are there days when the routine and the hierarchy of it all just feels like a spirit-crushing game? Read more... |
Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm, BBC Four review - the amazing story of Britain's own honky chateauSaturday, 18 July 2020
Farms have played quite a large part in the history of rock, not just in terms of those wealthy stars who retire to one, tending sheep and making cheese. The festivals at Woodstock, the Isle of Wight and Glastonbury all took place on farms but before everyone turned on, tuned in and dropped out in the mud and the sun, two farmers in a village on the Welsh borders had set up the world’s first residential recording studio. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Disney+...
Director Thom Zimny has become the audio-visual Boswell to Bruce Springsteen’s Samuel Johnson, having made...
Blitz review - racism persists as bombs batter London
Blitz, set on a vast CGI canvas in September 1941, is an improbable boy’s adventure tale that depicts the misery and terror that was...
The Buddha of Suburbia, Barbican Theatre review - farcical f...
Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 novel The Buddha of Suburbia begins like this: “My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost...
Small Things Like These review - less is more in stirring Ir...
There’s much to note and commend about Small Things Like These, a sensitive, gorgeously shot and moving adaptation of Claire Keegan’...
Anora review - life lesson for a kick-ass sex worker
Anora has had so much hype since it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May that it doesn’t really need another reviewer weighing in. Sean...
Album: Willie Nelson - Last Leaf on the Tree
Well, seems like only yesterday when I reviewed Willie Nelson’s last album, Borderline, an excellent set from the man’s ninth decade, and...
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Rigoletto, English National Opera review - another hit for M...
How we used to mock those stuck-in-the-mud opera houses that wheeled out the same moth-eaten production of some box-office favourite decade after...
How To Survive Your Mother, King's Head Theatre review...
It is unsurprising to learn in the post-show Q&A that each audience receives Jonathan Maitland’s new play based on his 2006...
Album: The Cure - Songs of a Lost World
Could melancholia be an elixir of creative youth? Or is it that sad people were never really that youthful, so age suits them? Certainly it seems...